


I Think That I’m Broken (When I Try to Be Open)

by Dalektable



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s10e06 The Gang Misses the Boat, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalektable/pseuds/Dalektable
Summary: “I wanna stay,” he says without hesitation. He doesn't say that he thought about leaving, because they're different together. Less cynical. They build each other up instead of tearing each other down. Together they can unlearn years of torturing one another and be healthy. He thinks. He hopes. If she wants it.





	I Think That I’m Broken (When I Try to Be Open)

**Author's Note:**

> This is distinctly told from the point of view of a narrator because I cannot fathom reducing my vocabulary to write Charlie at this moment in time. I’d like to explore that in the future, but my writing style currently is not entirely compatible with trying to incorporate how he would phrase things with a limited vocab. I got a B.A. in English, so I might as well use it. I wrote about half of this on my phone, so if you catch any errors I missed, please tell me!
> 
> Title is from Zella Day's _[Ace of Hearts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WilEj9DT2DU)_ , which strikes me as a Chardee song.

He'd tried to keep his eyes from her face, focus on her body, on their bodies together. It's easier to deny that way: if he doesn't look at who he's fucking, he has plausible deniability.But his eyes are drawn to her face inevitably, watching as her eyes slip closed while she rocks in his lap. Their clothes are barely pulled off--he'd insisted on removing her shirt and bra, but her jeans are still hanging off one ankle and her panties are just pushed to the side. He's in a similar situation: his pants and underwear pushed to his ankles, shirt half ridden up his chest from Dee’s forceful hands working their way under the fabric while they'd kissed earlier.

It takes a moment for him to notice, which he'll blame on the haze of arousal later, that her eyes and cheeks are glittering in the dull light of her apartment. His hands grip her hips harder, like she’ll float away if lets go of her. He doesn't want to stop and ask if something’s wrong because he doesn't want it to be over before it's  _ over.  _

“Dee, are you crying?” The words slip out anyway, sounding softer than he had expected. They're words that would usually hold at least a hit of malicious teasing, but they'd discussed that, hasn't they? Without the guys, they're softer, jagged edges blurred by an affection 25 years deep. 

“Fuck you, Charlie. I'm not crying,” she says, even as she moves one hand to wipe at her cheeks. He bites back a comment that that's exactly what she's already doing. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t in part because he didn’t want her to get mad and kick him out with blue balls.

She hasn't stopped moving, and he hasn't stopped watching her, breath hitching every time she switches her angle or rhythm. He should have expected that after all that experience, Dee would be really good at this. Despite the tears she’d wiped away, more appear like tiny diamonds speckling her eyelashes and cheeks. Another thought occurs to Charlie. 

“Oh shit, am I hurting you?” 

She chokes back bitter laughter. “You're not that big, Charlie.”

She doesn't stop making eye contact with him, though, and the glittering in her eyes doesn't stop. Dee is jagged and sharp like a cliff, but her eyes are gentle like a pool of water at the bottom to break his fall.  The little sounds she’s holding breath are like a songbird’s songs. He wants to play her like his keyboard until she hits the high notes, loud and unashamed.

He moves his hands from her hips and up her back, pulling her close enough to kiss, sloppy and uncoordinated. Her hands come to rest on his biceps--she's been touching his arms a lot recently, he thinks in the back of his mind--and she doesn't hesitate to respond. He moves one hand between them to rub her clit with one thumb, and he can feel her tears on his own cheeks. They kiss through the end, when she's pulsing around his cock and he's biting her lip to keep himself from making an embarrassing noise. 

They don't move immediately after; he presses sleepy kisses down her neck while she plays with his hair. It’s so soft his chest aches and he wants to bury his face in her throat and cry, too. He’s wanted this longer than even he knows, the reality of the damage they’ve done to their friendship as palpable as her body under his fingers.

“I'm surprised you're still here,” she says after a few minutes, pulling off of him and settling on the couch next to him. She doesn't fix her clothes yet. Instead, she looks anywhere but at Charlie. 

“I wanna stay,” he says without hesitation. He doesn't say that he thought about leaving, because they're different together. Less cynical. They build each other up instead of tearing each other down. Together they can unlearn years of torturing one another and be healthy. He thinks. He hopes. If she wants it. 

“Mac is at that Dusty chick’s place, I guess,” she says, offhand, like it doesn't matter to her. Charlie makes a scrunched-up face at the mention of her name. “Dennis isn't going to be back tonight.” Dee shrugs, finally looking over at him. He can still see the tears shining in her eyes. 

Charlie has always been good at reading people, and he's known Dee since before her walls were so thick. She sounds like she doesn't care, but she wants him to stay as much as he wants to stay. What this means, he doesn't know, because he's never been good at knowing much of anything. 

He pulls his underwear back up, leaving his pants in a heap on the floor until Dee kicks her pants off the one leg they’re still clinging to and picks both pairs up along with her shirt and bra. She carries them into the bedroom without giving Charlie a second glance, but yet he follows after her, not unlike a puppy, amazed at how she walks so self-assured in so little after years of insult after insult. 

( He thinks birds are beautiful, graceful, and wonderful, for the record. It’s just that no one has ever wanted to listen. )

He wonders how much he has contributed to the weathering of her self-esteem, how many bricks he stacked into the walls she has now put up between them. ( Unless those walls have always been up--he’s just never noticed much until now. They’d been gone, the two of them had been together and she’d said “ _ I’m scared. _ ” She’d been honest. He’d been honest. The walls seem higher now. )

When he closes the doors behind them, she turns on her heel to face him. Their clothes are in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed, and Dee’s in nothing but her panties. She looks angry, now, rather than sad or wistful or lost. Maybe it’s a bit wrong of him to feel slightly turned on. 

“Why do you want to be here, Charlie?” 

He stumbles over his words trying to answer too quickly, as if she’ll slip out in the silence between her question and her answer. As if the space between their voices will be the space she puts between them when they leave the apartment and enter the real world again: a world of man-eats-man-eats-woman. They’re all out for themselves, and he wants to hold her through the night and have it not be true for just a handful of hours. 

“I, well, uh, we make a good team, Dee.” 

She looks at him skeptically. He’s just parroting back their words from earlier with no real meaning. 

“A-and I just want this to last, you know?” 

Dee blinks at him, and he thinks for a moment he can see the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes again. 

“Okay, Charlie. Let’s go to bed.”

It doesn’t take them long to get settled and comfortable. He’d expected her to keep him at a distance, but she’d pulled him close almost immediately, resting her head between his shoulder and neck and draping her arm over his chest. He brings his arms up to wrap around her in the best way he can. 

They lie for a while, no sound but the noise of traffic outside her bedroom window, faint in the night, and their breathing. In his post-sex sleepiness, Charlie is the first to begin drifting to sleep when Dee speaks up from in his arms, so softly he isn’t sure he’s hearing her correctly at first. 

“I never do this,” she whispers, drawing patterns onto his chest. She’s not looking up at him, but he can practically feel her holding her breath, waiting for a response. 

“Have sex?” Charlie asks. It seems highly unlikely that Dee  _ never _ has sex, given the number of men they had managed to round up when they’d thought someone had knocked her up on accident. 

“No, you--” She stops herself in the middle of a sentence. “No. I don’t  _ cuddle  _ after sex. I don’t let men sleep over. I don’t have meaningful sex.” She laughs now, and it sounds half tinged with self-loathing, half with regret. “There’s no way to sleep with someone you’ve known since you were teenagers and not have it mean something.” She doesn't say she's scared again, but he knows she is. He's scared, too.

She’s always looking for meaning in meaningless sexual encounters; this is something Dennis has said about her when it was just Mac and Charlie as his witnesses. Charlie has never thought that was entirely fair. They’re all looking for meaning and validation everywhere. Dee just wants love after growing up without it. How can they blame her for that? 

“Do you want it to mean something?” He whispers back. They can pretend it means nothing if they try hard enough. Maybe they will in the morning. He doesn't know. He never knows. 

“Yeah,” she says. 

He tightens his arms around her. 

“Me, too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was my attempt to tie together s10e6, The Gang Misses the Boat, and s12e7, PTSDee. I can't help but see a sense of defensiveness in Charlie's reactions to Dee's announcement of her 'super meaningful' stripper sex, as well as something on Dee's end. The way it was cut to show looks between the two of them certainly didn't help, so I went ahead and wrote something that might show insight into those reactions. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure I had them completely in character, but this also is an incredibly unusual situation to be throwing them into, i.e. strange emotional vulnerability. Tell me how I did, please! I absolutely love reading/responding to comments and this is my first IASIP work, but hopefully not my last.


End file.
